Stephen O’Grady at Redmonk is doing a Linux install on our hottest ultraportable — the X60s. I didn’t dare do my first Ubuntu build on my primary office machine due to Lotus Notes concerns, so I’m going to follow his smart commentary on how well the X60s does when put through its Linux paces. Stephen points to the Think Wiki, which is an excellent resource for Thinkpad owners looking for Linux info.
“I’ll have to put my more detailed review of the x60s off for a bit – particularly its Linux compatability – because at the moment I’m hung up with my installation of Gentoo Linux. First impressions were excellent but brief, because about 10 minutes after I first booted the machine I was shaving down the XP partition (using Acronis Disk Director) to carve out space for my Linux instance.”Installation from there went smoothly until I tried to boot into Linux for the first time and was unable to (the XP partition is just fine, and is there if I need it). Before anyone jumps to conclusions and decides either that x60’s are incompatible with Linux or that installing Linux on the desktop is hard, let me say that I’ve purposefully chosen one of the hardest installation procedures – a fully manual Gentoo setup. According to Thinkwiki, people have had little difficulty getting both SuSE 10.1 and Ubuntu Dapper set up on this model. While I may be forced into taking that route (I’ ve got Dapper downloading now just in case), I’m going to continue with my efforts to get Gentoo installed because that’s what I’m most comfortable with.
